Evolution of network technologies resulted in a world of interconnected networks where businesses and households are now amazingly close to eachother. The notion of “network” turns out to be central to our times: the Internet, LANs, WANs, enterprise networks, home networks, etc. are today interconnected over the World Wide Web, changing our lives and the way we do business. This evolution presents significant challenges to service and network providers, which attempt to serve their clients faster and better, by continuously enlarging and upgrading their networks with a view to serve a growing number of clients and to implement the latest advances in networking technologies.
Typically, the equipment is situated in an environmentally hardened enclosure, such as a cabinet, or in a central office (CO) or a point-of-presence office which is generally environmentally controlled. Because the cost of space in these environments is high, the equipment is commonly organized in the most compact manner that is practical. As a result, there is often a confusing collection of cabling running through the environment to interconnect the equipment within the respective location (office, cabinet, etc) both to other equipment within the location and to equipment outside of the location.
Network deployment and upgrading presents complex challenges to providers, one of which is managing interconnections between equipment of various size, make and functionality (also referred to here as systems) that make-up the network. To use an example provided on the HP website at http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/about/asset_tracking.html: “a single rack of servers might have 2,000 identical optical cables running into and out of it; it can take two people three days to connect just 500 of them.” Therefore, it is important that specific cables are connected to specific places on the equipment.
Thus, techniques to ascertain the existing physical cabling connections between various systems within a certain location (e.g. a Central Office) are needed. For example, it may be necessary to make such a determination if modifications to cabling were to be carried out, or if other modifications were to be made that could put the cabling at risk. Preferably, these techniques would not involve disconnecting the cables, especially in the case of communications networks since such an action would affect services being carried over those cables. Furthermore, these techniques would also apply to cabling connections of electronic systems in general, in situations where there are numerous systems to be interconnected at a particular installation site and there are a very large number of electrical or optical cables interconnecting them, such that there exists a very real possibility of incorrect connections and wherein determining the exact nature of the interconnection errors would be a very onerous and time consuming task. In addition, these techniques should be equally applicable to cables made of optical fiber or copper.
It is known to attach identifying tags to cabling; this may be as simple as attaching a paper tag with a tie-wrap or writing on a piece of tape that is adhered to the cable. However, physical tags may become separated from the cables and the labels may be rendered illegible. Further, locating a particular tag amongst a great many tagged cables in a crowded environment may be difficult.
It is also known to use unique connectors. The connectors may be affixed to multiple cables and have a geometry that allows insertion into only one type of device in one particular way. However, the connectors must be connected to the cables in the proper way. Further, designing and manufacturing unique connectors for a very large number of cables is difficult and relatively costly because each can only serve a particular function and production runs tend to be in relatively small numbers.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID or RF-ID) technology, although nascent, is known for improving supply chain efficiency by facilitating tracking of goods. For example, RFID may displace the bar codes currently used to identify products. An RFID tag is a small, inexpensive circuitry chip which stores data such as a product's expiration date and Electronic Product Code (EPC). The circuitry is responsive to a particular RF signal transmitted by a reader to generate a corresponding signal including the stored data. The range of the corresponding signal is dependent on various factors, but may be effective up to ten meters.
For example, Hewlett Packard and Connectivity Technologies offer solutions in this area, particularly using RFID tags at the ends of cables and RFID readers at the connection ports of systems to read the tags to identify the endpoint of cables that are connected to the ports. The cable identification information is then sent to an Operation Support System (OSS) or Network Management System (NMS) that uses the information to determine the interconnection of the systems, which is made available to an operator, e.g. as a network map. However, not only does this solution require an OSS or NMS capable of receiving and processing the interconnection information, it also requires that all systems participating in this solution have RFID readers at their port connectors. Retrofitting or replacing the I/O cards of legacy systems to include the required RFID readers may not be practical or cost-effective in some cases.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a solution for determining the cabling interconnection of systems that at least does not require an RFID reader at both endpoints of a cable interconnecting two systems.